MISTAKES TO AVOID WHILE TRAINING YOUR LEGS

Fouad Abiad's Tips for Building Bigger Legs

Most bodybuilders never maximize their legs, because they are forever repeating the same mistakes. IFBB Pro Fouad Abiad discusses the most frequent leg-training blunders and shows you how to fix them so you can start making better gains.

Fouad Abiad's Leg Workout

Leg Press: 

Make sure you are going deep enough! You want to bring the weight down until you are at a 90 degree angle. Do not let your back round off of the pad at the bottom of the movement, go as deep as you and stop just before that point. Make sure that you have your feet low enough on the sled to engage more of your quads, push through the heels to fully engage quads. Leg presses should be high volume meaning that you should be doing lots of sets, doing 8-12 repetitions, going heavier each set until failure. 

Squats:

A big mistake on squats is not going deep enough. You want to go to at least a 90 degree angle, so that your quad is parallel with the floor. Make sure your feet stay planted! Don’t lift your heels up, drive through the heels and balls of your feet, you want to make sure you have a solid base. Keep your head up, this will keep your back straighter and more upright which keeps the emphasis on your quads and takes it off of the lower back. 

Leg Extension: 

In order to fully activate the quads, especially the center of the quad, you want to make sure that you are keeping your feet flexed up as much as possible so that your toes are pointed to the sky. Ensure that you are getting a good stretch in the quads by slightly pulling the seat further back and set the range of motion enough for the quads to get a stretch at the bottom of the leg extension. Here we want to keep the volume high. This isn’t an exercise to go as heavy as possible, you want to perform sets of 20-25 reps, really focusing on contracting your quads and driving blood into the muscle.